The Kansas State Board of Education deserves credit for its swift work toward finding a state education commissioner to replace Bob Corkins (in photo). But the board gets no credit for transparency: The names of the five finalists have not been released, and the board’s April 26 interviews will be behind closed doors. It’s good to know that all five have education experience, that two are from Kansas and that chairman Bill Wagnon is “very pleased with the quality of the candidates.” But especially after the fiasco that resulted in Corkins’ hiring, Kansans deserve to know more about the hunt for the state’s next education czar.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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9 Comments
No commissioner is better than what we had.
We need to dismiss the Board and just have a Secretary of Education appointed by the governor.
Joe, while I agree with you on this, the action you suggest will take a Kansas constitutional amendment to achieve.
Gosh, do you think this secrecy has anything to do with the increase in corruption as mentioned in a thread above?
My experience has been that when corruption and abuse of power become so blatent that it can NOT be ignored, people in affected communities, or in this case the state, go one of two ways.
Either they take action, call for investigations, and boot the bastards out, or…
… they stick their fingers in their ears, their heads in the sand, and sing “lalalalala, I cant see or hear you” and walk away from the polls in extreme apathy.
What do you suppose those upright pillars of the state of Kansas do?
I hear singing right now. And the sheeple sleep…
Sorry for mixing threads here, but Kansas has some of the worst open meetings laws in the nation. The KPA tried to get more transparancy in government, but guess who defeated it?
That’s right. The local county commissioners and city council folks FLOCKED to Topeka to testify and lobby against the open meetings law bill that would have required better record keeping and more transparancy in both local and state government.
I guess it is no coincidence that the WaKeeney and Trego County folks squealed like stuck hogs when that bill was introduced. They beat a path to Topeka to fight it.
And now they are under investigations for open meetings law violations.
Gee, who’d a thunk it? :)
I guess the moral of the story is that if voters really get tired of corruption and secrecy, they need to speak loudly and frequently with their State reps and senators to SUPPORT the Kansas Press Association’s efforts to make government accountable and open.
The BOE hides behind these kansas laws that promote secrecy. If voters dont like it, they know what to do.
Welcome to reality Rhonda. The education establishment just tells you want to think. They do not want your input. They will make the choices and you should acknowledge those decisions as gospel.
Only through choice in education could someone realistically affect the decision making process. Voting a couple of new members to the BOE every few years is simply not reactionary enough to the needs of the public.
This is Wednesday PM but the Kansas Board of Education has yet to announce the identity of the new Kansas Education Commissioner.
Two candidates are reported to be Kansans but no other identifying descriptions were given. Will the winning candidate be a productive activist or a passivist on Kansas education matters?
We should know soon.
Regarding the history of education in Kanas, I have a book, A HISTORY OF KANSAS, written by Anna E. Arnold, published in 1915. Anna Arnold apparently researched and wrote the book while serving as an elected County Superintendent of Schools in Chase County (Cottonwood Falls), Kansas.
One slow weekend several years ago, I researched Anna Arnold’s story and found she apparently had resided almost a hundred years ago in a little house, then ramshackle but still standing in a grove of trees at the west edge of Cottonwood Falls. Presumably Anna often rode those old coal burning Santa Fe passenger trains from Strong City to Topeka to research her books. Anna never married. I ran across a rumor that W’m Strong, vice president of the Santa Fe Railroad and from whom Strong City took its name was a special friend of Anna so might have provided a travel discount for those cold winter night trips to and from Topeka around the turn of the century some hundred years ago.
In any case, Anna’s book lists the Kansas “Superintendents of Public Instruction” up till 1913, the last being a fellow named W.D. Ross. Incidentally, in 1895 to 1897, the state superintendent was Edmund Stanley, a Quaker and namesake of the Edmund Stanley Library at Friends University here in Wichita. As I recall, Mr. Stanley was also first president of Wichita’s Friends University after it was purchased from the Christian Churches in the 1890’s.
Under a chapter “Education In Kansas,” Anna says “… the function of high school has come to be regarded as supplying the great mass of pupils who will never go to college, the best possible preparation for the business of life.” Anna talks about the opening of the “state normal school in Emporia in 1865,” normal school being a college for teachers. I suspect Anna Arnold attended college in Emporia just east of her parent’s home in Strong City/Cottonwood Falls.
Anna mentions the various Kansas colleges in 1913 were placed under a board of three members called the Board of Administration. I presume this was the forerunner of the Kansas Board of Regents. She mentions several specialized schools such as the Olathe school for the deaf and the Kansas City (Kansas) school for the blind.
She also mentions a school I never heard of called the “School of Mines” in Weir City??? Does anyone know about this?
Anyway, the bottomline is that each Kansas county elected a County Superintendent of Schools and Kansans elected a State Superintendent of Public Instruction for a two-year term. Interesting but I doubt if we can go back down that road.